Back-Talk #1 #2 #3 #4. R for language.
“When people fear the government, there is tyranny.
When government fears the people, there is liberty.”
– – Thomas Paine
Wikipedia
In the United States, impeachment can occur both at the federal and state level. For the executive branch, only those who have allegedly committed “treason, bribery, or other high crimes and misdemeanors” may be impeached.
Impeachment is so rare that the term is often misunderstood. A typical misconception is to confuse it with involuntary removal from office; in fact, it is only the legal statement of charges, paralleling an indictment in criminal law. Read more of this article at Wikipedia.
The earliest posts are at the bottom of the page.
“To announce that there must be no criticism of the President, or that we are to stand by the President, right or wrong, is not only unpatriotic and servile, but is morally treasonable to the American public.”
– – Theodore Roosevelt 1918
by Sherwood Ross
The recent surge of terrorist violence in Iran likely is being funded in part by the Bush administration with the support of Congress.
According to a report in the July 7-14 issue of The New Yorker magazine, investigative reporter Seymour Hersh says the U.S. reportedly has been funding the Iranian dissident terrorist group Mujahideen-e-Khalq, or M.E.K.; the Kurdish separatist Party for a Free Life in Kurdistan, or PJAK; and, according to some sources, the Jundallah, or Iranian People’s Resistance Movement.
“Hardly a day goes by now we don't see a clash somewhere,” retired U.S. Air Force Colonel Sam Gardiner is quoted by Hersh as stating. “There were three or four incidents over a recent weekend, and the Iranians are even naming the Revolutionary Guard officers who have been killed.” Gardiner has taught strategy at the National War College and is monitoring the violence in Iran.
The bloodshed in Iran likely has been underwritten by the U.S. Congress which last year acceded to a request from Bush “to fund a major escalation of covert operations against Iran,” Hersh writes, “designed to destabilize the country's religious leadership.” Bush asked for $400 million for the work.
“The covert activities involve support of the minority Ahwazi Ara and Baluchi groups and other dissident organizations,” Hersh added, noting that “Clandestine operations against Iran are not new” and U.S. Special Operations Forces “have been conducting cross-border operations from southern Iraq, with Presidential authorization, since last year.” article continues
Larry Beinhart
On June 10, 2008, Dennis Kucinich introduced 35 Articles of Impeachment against George W. Bush.
On June 11, 2008, they were referred to the Judiciary Committee. According to NPR, the Associated Press and the like, they were sent there to die.
That's too bad.
Because George Bush has committed "high crimes and misdemeanors." Impeachable offenses. A lot of them.
He, and his administration, have also created a cloud of confusion and obfuscation around everything that's happened in his administration. Every investigation has ground to a halt, lost in corporate lawyers tricks - refusal to hand over documents, lost documents, redacted documents, officials who can't remember, or, at last resort, refuse to answer subpoenas.
According to the Articles of Impeachment:
•The administration consciously lied about the reasons to go to war.
•Conspired to create a secret propaganda campaign to go to war.
•Failed to meet the terms set out in the bill that allowed the president to go to war, thereby making the war illegal.
•Failed to meet the terms set by international law for war, therefore engaging in a "war of aggression," a war crime.
•Engaged in Torture
•Illegal Detention: Detaining Indefinitely And Without Charge Persons Both U.S. Citizens and Foreign Captives
•Rendition: Kidnapping People and Taking Them Against Their Will to "Black Sites" Located in Other Nations, Including Nations Known to Practice Torture
•Imprisoning Children
•Failure, as the occupying power, to protect the civilian population of Iraq.
•Providing immunity for criminal acts by contractors, thereby condoning murder, rape and other crimes.
•Spied on Americans without warrants.
•Intentionally subverting and refusing to enforce laws through signing statements.
•Tampering with Free and Fair Elections,
•Corruption of the Administration of Justice
•Conspiracy to Violate the Voting Rights Act of 1965
•Obstruction of the Investigation into the Attacks of September 11, 2001
•Denial of Habeas Corpus
Among other things.
Many of these are on the record as true.
If congress says the hell with it, too much trouble to bring that up, and we don't want to look vindictive, and just shrugs its shoulders, that makes them co-conspirators.
The man who will now make the decision to stash the charges on the shelf until after January, 2009, when Bush is gone, or to open up hearings, is John Conyers.
John Conyers phone number is (202) 225-5126
by Dave Lindorff
…What exactly is an impeachable offense? Essentially it is an abuse of power. A crime can be an impeachable offense and cannot be. And an action can be an impeachable offense without being a crime. If the president cheats on his taxes, that may not be impeachable. You or I could do that. It’s not an abuse of his power. But if he lies to the public about serious national policy matters, that may be impeachable, without being a crime. Shooting your hunting buddy in the face: not impeachable. Outing an undercover agent: impeachable. Lying about sex is arguably not a proper impeachable offense. Anyone can do THAT. Firing U.S. Attorneys because they won’t pervert the justice system to serve your partisan electoral interests is probably impeachable. In the end, of course, what’s impeachable is simply whatever the House of Representatives decides is impeachable. The founders discussed more than anything else, I think, the need to have the power of impeachment in case a president took the nation into an unnecessary war.
When President Polk misled the nation into an aggressive war on Mexico with the intention of stealing Mexican land, a young Republican congressman named Abraham Lincoln challenged him. … “Allow the President to invade a neighboring nation, whenever he shall deem it necessary to repel an invasion, and you allow him to do so, whenever he may choose to say he deems it necessary for such purpose — and you allow him to make war at pleasure. Study to see if you can fix any limit to his power in this respect, after you have given him so much as you propose. If, today, he should choose to say he thinks it necessary to invade Canada, to prevent the British from invading us, how could you stop him? You may say to him, ‘I see no probability of the British invading us’ but he will say to you ‘be silent; I see it, if you don’t.’ The provision of the Constitution giving the war–making power to Congress, was dictated, as I understand it, by the following reasons: Kings had always been involving and impoverishing their people in wars, pretending generally, if not always, that the good of the people was the object. This, our Convention understood to be the most oppressive of all Kingly oppressions; and they resolved to so frame the Constitution that no one man should hold the power of bringing this oppression upon us.”
Lincoln wrote these words while America was at war with Mexico, under the presidency of James Polk, and while Lincoln was a member of Congress. But Lincoln did more than talk about the fraud that had been used to launch that illegal and imperialistic war. He introduced a resolution demanding that Polk provide proof. Polk claimed to have launched that war only after American blood had been shed on American soil. Lincoln’s resolution required Polk to identify the spot where that blood had been shed.
“Let him answer fully, fairly, and candidly,&rdquo Lincoln said of the wartime President. “Let him answer with facts and not with arguments. Let him attempt no evasion, no equivocation.”
When President Polk did not answer, Lincoln and John Quincy Adams sought a formal investigation of the president’s pre–war intelligence claims, and of his use of secret funds to launch his fraudulent and illegal war. Under this pressure, Polk announced that he would not seek reelection. Lincoln, Adams, and their allies in Congress then passed a resolution honoring the service of Major General Zachary Taylor “in a war unnecessarily and unconstitutionally begun by the President of the United States.”
Which brings us to the question of exactly what Bush’s and Cheney’s impeachable offenses are. An exhaustive list would take us all day, so I’ll give you my top 12 for the president and my top 12 for his boss.
And by the way, the founders intentionally chose a single executive, not a pair, not a triumvirate, not a council, in order to hold that one person responsible for the executive branch. The Cheney co–presidency and groups like the secret energy task force deny us the ability to know who the decider is, but under our Constitution it really is Bush, regardless of what you may think of his mental abilities.
BUSH:
1. Refusal to comply with subpoenas (not disputable, and passed by the Judiciary Committee against Nixon)
2. Routine violation of numerous laws, preceded by announcement of intention to do so in signing statements (White House website and GAO studies)
3. Violating U.S. law and the Constitution through widespread wiretapping of the phone calls and emails of Americans without a warrant. (Confessed to.)
4. Commuting the sentence of I Lewis Scooter Libby.
5. Violating the United Nations Charter by launching an illegal “War of Aggression” against Iraq without cause, using fraud to sell the war to Congress and the public, and misusing government funds to begin bombing without Congressional authorization.
6. Violating U.S. and international law by authorizing the torture of thousands of captives, resulting in dozens of deaths, and keeping prisoners hidden from the International Committee of the Red Cross.
7. Violating the Constitution by arbitrarily detaining Americans, legal residents, and non–Americans, without due process, without charge, and without access to counsel.
8. Violating the Geneva Conventions by targeting civilians, journalists, hospitals, and ambulances, and using illegal weapons, including white phosphorous, depleted uranium, and a new type of napalm.
9. Violating U.S. law by using paid propaganda and disinformation, selectively and misleadingly leaking classified information, and exposing for political retribution the identity of a covert CIA operative working on sensitive WMD proliferation.
10. Violating U.S. and state law by obstructing honest elections in 2000, 2002, 2004, and 2006.
11. Gross negligence in failing to assist New Orleans residents after Hurricane Katrina.
12. (This one is happening right now.) Negotiating with the president of Iraq an agreement of a sort that heretofore has always been called a treaty, but doing so without the constitutionally required advice and consent of the US Senate, or for that matter the Iraqi Parliament. The power to negotiate such treaties would logically include the power to negotiate the same sort of treaty in reverse: that is to say, an agreement to station Iraqi troops in the United States with the license to kill Americans with impunity.
CHENEY:
1. Refusal to comply with subpoenas.
2. Creating and advocating the “Unitary Executive Theory” which is used by the White House to defy laws duly enacted by Congress and thereby justify dictatorial action. Cheney’s office has drafted many if not all of the signing statements.
3. Cheney played a key role in setting up illegal spying programs.
4. Coordinating campaign to obstruct the investigation conducted by Patrick Fitzgerald.
5. Coordinating a campaign of retribution against whistleblower Joseph Wilson, including the outing of a covert CIA operative.
6. Leading efforts to institute routine use of torture.
7. Leading campaign to manipulate pre–war intelligence.
8. Creating a secret Energy Task Force which operated in defiance of open–government laws.
9. Directing massive no–bid contracts to his company, Halliburton, and profiting from the same illegal war he defrauded the American public to launch.
10–12. The charges found in H Res 333, also known as H Res 799.
For some of these impeachable offenses, the evidence is not even disputable. They simply have refused to comply with subpoenas, for example. The subpoena that Nixon refused to comply with was part of an impeachment investigation, but the equivalent could be generated in a week by simply opening an impeachment hearing and subpoenaing testimony or evidence from Bush or Cheney.
The signing statements, for example, are completely public. And while Congress should impeach regardless of its own level of complicity in the offenses being addressed, there are plenty of offenses like refusing subpoenas and releasing signing statements that Congress is not complicit in at all.
Violations of FISA and the 4th Amendment are not in dispute. Bush is on videotape lying about the warrantless spying programs for years. He’s also on videotape openly confessing to violating FISA. John Dean, Nixon’s lawyer, calls Bush the first president to confess to an impeachable offense.
Have Bush and Cheney threatened an aggressive war on Iran? They’re both on videotape doing so. Cheney has done so from a ship off the coast of Iran. Remember that in the 1950s our CIA overthrew Iran’s democracy and installed a dictator. We have labeled Iran evil and criminal. We have invaded and occupied the nations to its east and west (Afghanistan and Iraq). So threats to Iran are taken seriously by the Iranians. If anything could drive Iran further toward dictatorship it would be an attack by the United States.
Was Bush criminally negligent during Hurricane Katrina? He’s on videotape being warned of the danger. He’s on videotape claiming he was never warned.
Have Bush and Cheney used unlawful detentions and torture? The Supreme Court in Rosul v. George W. Bush ruled detainees were being wrongfully imprisoned at Guantanamo Bay Detention Center in Cuba. The Bush Administration’s detainment policies and actions were ruled unconstitutional and illegal – in violation of Amendments V, VI &VII. The use of torture, legally justified by Attorney General Alberto Gonzales and thus condoned by President Bush and Vice President Cheney is an additional violation to the 8th Amendment. The Supreme Court again in Hamdan v. Donald Rumsfeld, George W. Bush, et al. ruled that the Military Commissions instituted by the Bush Administration violate the Universal Code of Military Justice and the Geneva Conventions to which we are bound by American law. Again, the Bush Administration’s actions were found by the highest court of the land to be illegal and unconstitutional – violating Amendments V, VI, VII . Bush and Cheney and their staffs have defended these policies on video and in writing. The practice of detaining without charge and the numerous victims of it are undisputed public knowledge. Evidence of torture is voluminous and indisputable and includes public photographs. Bush’s signature is on a February 2002 authorization to torture.
Bush openly admits it, but claims that certain torture techniques are not torture, techniques like waterboarding for which Americans have gone to prison, for which Americans have prosecuted Japanese as war criminals, techniques our founders hoped to leave behind in England through the Eighth Amendment.
Did Bush and Cheney intentionally mislead the Congress and the public into the invasion and occupation of Iraq? They are on videotape doing so, and the evidence that they knew exactly what they were doing is overwhelming and has been collected on my website at http://afterdowningstreet.org/keydocuments
Impeachment hearings could be dragged out for as long as desired, or could be over and done with in an hour. No new information is needed.
Ah, but isn’t it too late for impeachment?
It is never too late to establish that future presidents and vice presidents will be required to obey laws and the Constitution.
It is far from too late to try to prevent the damage Bush and Cheney can still do in the next 9.5 months, which DO exist.
There is nothing else for Congress to do that impeachment could distract from. All good bills are vetoed and all partially good bills are signing statemented.
Impeachment in this case could be very quick because of the overwhelming evidence.
If your preference is to focus on the next election, think about how that election would look were John McCain forced to choose between the Constitution and Dick Cheney.
Most impeachments happen late. The movements to impeach Truman and Hoover, and the impeachment of Johnson, happened later than where we are now.
Most impeachment movements achieve useful results in restoring the rule of law without getting all the way to impeachment, much less removal from office.
If there is time for endless hours of grilling steroid–popping baseball players, there is time for impeachment.
If Congress is sincere about wanting Bush and Cheney to obey its laws and comply with its subpoenas it will impeach. If it does not impeach, it is not sincere, and no non–impeachment investigations will get anywhere.
But isn’t this all beside the point when we should not dare to impeach a president during a time of war? No, I side with the last great Republican president on this one: Abraham Lincoln. When a president takes us into an unnecessary war, and people are dying for no good reason, that is the most important time to challenge the president. And this current so–called war, we are told, will last for decades or forever. If announcing eternal war provides immunity from impeachment, can you guess what percentage of presidents will make that announcement? James Madison saw war as the tool through which a president might seize inappropriate powers. “War,” he said, “is the true wet–nurse of executive aggrandizement.”
Remember, we are borrowing from China to spend our grandchildren’s hard–earned pay to fund an illegal occupation of a distant land, an operation that our own intelligence agencies say is boosting terrorist recruitment, an operation opposed by about 80 percent of Americans, 90 percent of Iraqis, and 70 percent of active–duty US troops. If we can’t challenge THAT, what can we challenge?
Well then, you might ask, isn’t it more important to end the occupation, the so–called war?
Ending the war is a task that could best be accomplished by inaction, by Congress refusing to provide any more funding. Or it could be accomplished by a bill created by one committee. It is not a full–time task for the entire Congress.
However, this Congress has already demonstrated that it has no intention of ending the war. Pelosi has sworn that cutting off the funding is “off the table.”
What could help move Congress would be the same thing that helped a previous Congress find the nerve to finally cut off the funding for the Vietnam War (once the troops were already home) and convinced Nixon not to veto the cut–off in funding: impeachment. In this case, even more so than Nixon’s, impeachment would drive the war debate in the right direction, because impeachment would be for offenses either directly connected to the war or offenses that have been justified by “war on terror” propaganda.
In addition, should Congress actually cut off the funding and end the war, it is very likely that Bush and Cheney would misappropriate funds from the Pentagon to keep the occupation going. They did so in order to secretly begin the war, and they have never been held accountable for it. So, removing them from office is not only needed in order to give Congress the nerve to end the war, but is also needed if the war is to actually end.
Won’t impeachment take up too much time and distract from other goals?
Nixon’s impeachment took three months. Clinton’s impeachment and trial combined took four months. The current Congress has wasted more than that amount of time already in avoiding impeachment, and has almost nothing to show for it (a minimal partial and gradual correction to the plummeting minimum wage). Congress has taken no serious steps toward ending the occupation of Iraq, and has in fact provided major new funding for it. During Nixon’s impeachment and the lead up to it, in contrast, the threat of impeachment allowed Congress to raise the minimum wage, create the Endangered Species Act, and end a war.
Important as stem cell research and immigration policy may be, when did the Bill of Rights become a distraction? What is more important than restoring the right to not be spied on, to not be picked up without charge and locked away to be tortured with no access to a lawyer, a trial, or your family, not to be sent into an aggressive war for greed and power? Of course, there are many pressing areas in which we need to pass legislation. But all good bills and vetoed, all mixed bills are signing–statemented, and all horrendous bills become law. There is nothing for impeachment to distract from. Impeachment is the one action that cannot be vetoed.
Why not just wait for the next election?
The authors of our Constitution established the schedule for elections, but devoted a lot more attention to the mechanism of impeachment as a check on elected despotism in between elections. They had recently thrown off a king and had no interest in electing temporary kings every four years. Neither should we.
Bush and Cheney can still do a great deal of damage before the end of their term. People are dying every day as a result of their policies. There is an urgent need to remove them from office in order to end the brutal occupation of Iraq and prevent an attack on Iran.
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By Peter Dreier
12/23/07 “Huffington Post”
Just a week before Christmas, President Bush gave corporate America two big presents. On Tuesday, his Federal Communications Commission changed the rules to allow the nation’s giant conglomerates to further consolidate their grip on the media by permitting them to purchase TV and radio stations in the same local markets where they already own daily newspapers. As a gift to the country’s automobile industry, Bush’s Environmental Protection Agency ruled Wednesday, over the objections of the agency’s staff, that California, the nation’s largest and most polluted state, and 16 other states, can’t impose regulations to limit greenhouse gases from cars and trucks that are stronger than the federal government’s own weak standards.
So far, no major politicians or editorial writers have labeled these actions “class warfare,” although this is precisely what Bush is engaged in –– helping the already rich and powerful at the expense of everyone else. Class warfare is, in fact, the very essence of Bush’s tenure in the White House. In thousands of ways, big and small, Bush has promoted the interests of the very rich and the largest corporations. Corporate lobbyists have the run of the White House. Their agenda – tax cuts for the rich and big business, attacks on labor unions, and the weakening of laws protecting consumers, workers and the environment from corporate abuse – is Bush’s agenda.
For example, Bush has handed the pharmaceutical industry windfall profits by restricting Medicare’s ability to negotiate for lower prices for medicine. He targeted huge no–bid federal contracts to crony companies like Haliburton to supply emergency relief, reconstruction services and materials to rebuild Katrina while attempting to slash federal wage laws for reconstruction workers. He repealed Clinton–era “ergonomics” standards, affecting more than 100 million workers, that would have forced companies to alter their work stations, redesign their facilities or change their tools and equipment if employees suffered serious work–related injuries from repetitive motions. He opposed stiffer health and safety regulations to protect mine workers and cut the budget for federal agencies that enforce mine safety laws. Not surprisingly, under Bush, we’ve seen the largest number of mine accidents and deaths in years. Bush’s Food and Drug Administration lowered product–labeling standards, allowing food makers to list health claims on labels before they have been scientifically proven. His FDA chief announced that the agency would no longer require claims to be based on “significant scientific agreement,” a change that the National Food Processors Association, the trade association of the $500 billion food processing industry, had lobbied for. Bush resisted efforts to raise the minimum wage (which had been stuck at $5.15 an hour for nine years) until the Democrats took back the Congress earlier this year.
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by Dave Lindorff
Efforts to Place Op–Ed on Issue Blocked by Leading Papers
Faced with an obstructionist leadership in the House, and a mainstream media that have forsaken their role as a Fourth Estate monitor of government abuse, three Democratic members of the House Judiciary Committee are calling on the public to demand that the Congress initiate impeachment hearings immediately against Vice President Dick Cheney.
Speaking at a telephone press conference Friday organized by Democrats.com, Rep. Robert Wexler (D–FL) said that following a bi–partisan vote Nov. 7 by the full House to send Rep. Dennis Kucinich’s Cheney impeachment bill (H Res 799, formerly H Res 333) to the Judiciary Committee, it was time for those hearings to “immediately” get underway.
Scoffing at the argument that has been made by House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and others in the Democratic leadership that impeachment might hurt Democratic chances in the November ’08 elections, or that it could deter Democrats from their Congressional agenda, Wexler says, “I believe that there is a constitutional obligation for the Congress to hold this administration accountable, and it should not depend on what people think the impact might be on an election. The only question should be: Did Vice President Cheney abuse his powers?”
He adds, “If the American people believe that the democrats are holding a legitimate inquiry into serious issues of constitutional importance, they will not hold it against them. And besides, initial polling would indicate that this is not some off–the–reservation idea.”
The Florida legislator, who had not been among the 22 co–sponsors of the impeachment bill submitted last April 24 by Rep. Kucinich, says that by beginning impeachment hearings in the House, “We would create our own fate, and we shouldn’t be afraid of that fate.”
Noting that the Democratic congressional leadership has been opposing impeachment by saying that they were sent to Washington “to act on issues like insuring children and ending the war,” Wexler says, “We have followed that strategy for a year now, and what we have been met with is a president who will not sign any of these measures and a Senate mired in filibusters. We have nothing to lose by starting impeachment.”
A major problem in challenging the Democratic leadership, however, has arisen in the form of a national media that simply ignores the growing national impeachment movement and the growing calls for impeachment within the Congress. Wexler reports that an opinion article (available at www.wexlerwantshearings.com) penned by himself and two Judiciary Committee colleagues, Reps. Luis Gutierrez (D–IL) and Tammy Baldwin (D–WI), which was sent to a number of leading newspapers, including the Miami Herald, the Washington Post and the New York Times, was rejected for publication––an astonishing act of censorship for a document authored by three members of congress on an issue of such significance as impeachment of the vice president. article continues
by Dave Lindorff
The most powerful leader in the world had called upon me to speak on his behalf and help restore credibility he lost amid the failure to find weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. So I stood at the White House briefing room podium in front of the glare of the klieg lights for the better part of two weeks and publicly exonerated two of the senior–most aides in the White House: Karl Rove and Scooter Libby.
There was one problem. It was not true.
I had unknowingly passed along false information. And five of the highest ranking officials in the administration were involved in my doing so: Rove, Libby, the Vice President, the President’s chief of staff, and the President himself.
––Excerpt from Scott McClellan’s forthcoming book “What Happened” (Public Affairs Books, due out in April 2008)
With that one little statement, released on the Public Affairs Books website this week, all excuses for not impeaching President Bush and Vice President Cheney, not to mention indicting Cheney (who of course has no immunity from prosecution while in office), have evaporated.
Here is rock–solid evidence from a man who, as press secretary, was privy to the inner workings of the White House, of a vile conspiracy involving the two top men in the Bush/Cheney administration, as well as their top three staffpeople, to expose the identity of an important CIA undercover operative, Valerie Plame, and then, when caught, to obstruct a criminal investigation by Special Counsel Patrick Fitzgerald, into that crime.
Forget for a moment the administration’s other high crimes and misdemeanors and acts of bribery and treason, though many, like defying laws passed by the Congress, or violating the Nuremburg Charter, are surely far more egregious. This particular set of crimes––conspiracy, obstruction of justice, lying, and of course the underlying crime of abuse of power and perhaps treason (since Plame’s responsibility as a high–rankiing CIA operative was preventing the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction, particularly in the Middle East!)––is serious enough.
There is no way that American democracy can continue to survive, even in its current truncated form, if the Congress continues to duck this issue and pretend that it has “more important things to do,” as Speaker Nancy Pelosi and her retinue of “leaders” in the House have continued to claim for an entire year in control of the Congress.
To keep impeachment “off the table,” knowing that the president and vice president brazenly lied to the American people and to the Special Counsel’s office about such a serious offense, is to make a mockery of the Constitution and the law. article continues
by Robert Parry
So, George W. Bush sees himself as the great defender of the U.S. Constitution.
In a
Nov. 15 speech to the right–wing Federalist Society, the President embraced the Constitution’s checks and balances as a vital protection against tyranny. And he demanded that federal judges act as fair referees, not political or ideological partisans.
To many Americans who have been aghast at Bush’s six–plus years of trampling the Constitution, such pronouncements might represent a textbook case of “cognitive dissonance”, a psychological term describing the uncomfortable tension when one’s stated principles are at odds with one’s actions.
For Bush, however, this divergence of words from behavior may be closer to the fable of the Emperor’s New Clothes, when the monarch strutted about in invisible garments while his terrified subjects kept quiet about his nakedness.
In this case, the Washington press corps reported on Bush’s speech as if the President were entirely sincere and left out contradictory facts.
For instance, there was silence about how Bush prevailed in Election 2000 by getting five partisan Republican justices on the U.S. Supreme Court to stop a recount of votes in Florida that – if it had been allowed to tally all legally cast ballots – might well have put Al Gore in the White House.
Instead, the five Republican justices cast aside any sense of neutrality – and their own principles about avoiding federal interference in state decisions – to hammer together a twisted ruling that halted the recount and gave the election to George W. Bush. [For details, see our new book, Neck Deep.]
Yet, in his Nov. 15 speech, Bush declared how important it was for judges to act as honest umpires. article continues
by Dave Lindorff
You wouldn’t know it if you just watch TV news or read the corporate press, but this past Tuesday, something remarkable happened. Despite the pig–headed opposition of the Democratic Party’s top congressional leadership, a majority of the House, including three Republicans, voted to send Dennis Kucinich’s long sidelined Cheney impeachment bill (H Res 333) to the Judiciary Committee for hearings.
The vote was 218 to 194.
Now the behind–the–scenes partisan maneuvering that preceded that vote was arcane indeed, with Kucinich first exercising a member’s privilege motion to present his stymied impeachment bill to the full House, only to have Speaker Nancy Pelosi arrange for a colleague (Majority Leader Steny Hoyer, D–MD) offer a motion to table it. The Republicans, anxious to embarrass the Speaker, threw a wrench into that plan, though, by voting as a bloc to oppose tabling. Since Kucinich already has 22 co–sponsors for his bill, it was clear that the tabling gambit would fail. As soon as that became apparent, rank–and–file Democrats, unwilling to be seen by their constituents as defending Cheney, rushed to change their votes to opposing the tabling motion. In the end, tabling failed by 242 to 170 with 77 Democrats supporting a pleasantly surprised Kucinich.
In order to avoid a floor debate on the merits of impeaching the eminently impeachable Vice President Cheney, Pelosi and her allies then moved to send Kucinich’s bill directly to the Judiciary Committee. They were joined by three Republicans, including maverick Republican presidential candidate Ron Paul (R–TX).
Now the hope of the Democratic leadership is that this means Kucinich’s impeachment bill will continue to be safely bottled up in a subcommittee of the Judiciary Committee. But it may not work out that way for them.
Whatever the explanation, this impeachment bill has been endorsed by a floor vote of the full House, with bipartisan support.
For the Judiciary Committee to sit on it now and not schedule a hearing would be a gross travesty of parliamentary procedure and custom.
Indeed, some House members not associated with Kucinich’s resolution are now openly calling for immediate hearings into Cheney’s impeachable actions––specifically lying the country into a war in Iraq, and threatening war with Iran.
One indication of the change in the political climate in the House is the announcement by Rep. Robert Wexler (D–FL), a six–term congressman and a member of the House Judiciary Committee, that he will call for the Judiciary Committee to take up Kucinich’s impeachment bill. This is significant because Wexler, no left–wing hothead, is not a co–signer of the Kucinich bill.
In an email message to constituents, Wexler said:
“I share your belief that Vice President Cheney must answer for his deceptive actions in office, particularly with regard to the preparations for the Iraq war and the revelation of the identity of covert agent Valerie Plame Wilson as part of political retribution against her husband.”
“…Cheney and the bush Administration have demonstrated a consistent pattern of abusing the law and misleading Congress and the American people. We see the consequences of these actions abroad in Iraq and at home through the violations of our civil liberties. The American people are served will with a legitimate and thorough impeachment inquiry. I will urge the Judiciary Committee to schedule impeachment hearings immediately and not let this issue languish as it has over the last six months. Only through hearings can we begin to correct the abuses of Dick Cheney and the bush administration; and if it is determined in these hearings that Vice President Cheney has committed High Crimes and Misdemeanors, he should be impeached and removed from office. It is time for Congress to expose the multitude of misdeeds of the Administration and I am hopeful that the Judiciary Committee will expeditiously begin an investigation of this matter.” article continues
by Jon Faulkner
Bush must be stopped from attacking Iran. If not by impeachment, then a case must be made that he’s mentally unfit, and hasn’t the ability to act in the interests of the nation. This, of course, will never happen. Though the democrats are the majority party in theory, the republicans remain the majority in practice. Network News reports that Bush is increasingly impatient with Iran – that he doesn’t believe the Iranian leadership and thinks that a military solution is the only way to destroy Iran’s capacity for producing weapons grade plutonium. The president of the International Atomic Energy Agency says, “Iran does not constitute a certain and immediate threat for the international community.” Russia’s President, Vladimir Putin concurred saying, “Moscow has no information that Iran is trying to build a nuclear bomb.”
This is all very familiar. Prior to attacking Iraq, Hans Blix, the U.N. weapons inspector, said there was no evidence of WMD in Iraq. It’s astonishing that the U.S. Congress is buying into the “war presidents” lies again. Voltaire, the great French satirist said, “Anyone who has the power to make you believe absurdities has the power to make you commit atrocities.” Bush has destabilized the Middle East with his attacks on Iraq and Afghanistan, and he’s enabled Iran to emerge as a regional power. It’s a collective, American insanity that allows Bush to continue destroying U.S. interests around the world. If he’s allowed to attack Iran, and there doesn’t appear to be anyone to stop him, the U.S. will suffer far reaching, catastrophic consequences.
But Bush and Cheney won’t be the ones who suffer from their actions… article continues
Baghdad George
How George Bush Became the New Saddam
Patrick Graham / McLean’s, October 1, 2007
It was embarrassing putting my flak jacket on backwards and sideways, but in the darkness of the Baghdad airport car park I couldn’t see anything. "Peterik, put the flak jacket on," the South African security contractor was saying politely, impatiently. "You know the procedure if we are attacked."
I didn’t. He explained. One of the chase vehicles would pull up beside us and someone would drag me out of the armoured car, away from the firing. If both drivers were unconscious –– nice euphemism –– he said I should try to run to the nearest army checkpoint. If the checkpoint was American, things might work out if they didn’t shoot first. If it was Iraqi… he didn’t elaborate.
Arriving in Baghdad has always been a little weird. Under Saddam Hussein it was like going into an orderly morgue; when he ran off after the U.S.–led invasion of March 2003 put an end to his Baathist party regime, the city became a chaotic mess. I lived in Iraq for almost two years, but after three years away I wasn’t quite ready for just how deserted and worn down the place seemed in the early evening. It was as if some kind of mildew was slowly rotting away at the edges of things, breaking down the city into urban compost.
Since 2003, more than 3,775 U.S. troops have been killed in Iraq, while nearly 7,500 Iraqi policemen and soldiers have died. For Iraq’s civilian population, the carnage has been almost incalculable. Last year alone, the UN estimated that 34,500 civilians were killed and more than 36,000 wounded; other estimates are much higher. As the country’s ethnic divisions widen, especially between Iraq’s Arab Shia and Arab Sunni Muslims (the Kurds are the third major group), some two million people have been internally displaced, with another two million fleeing their homeland altogether. Entering Baghdad I could tell the Sunni neighbourhoods, ghettos really, by the blasts in the walls and the emptiness, courtesy of sectarian cleansing by the majority Shias. The side streets of the Shia districts seemed to have a little more life to them. article continues
by Robert Parry
During the lazy summer of 2001, relatively few Americans had even heard of al–Qaeda, which in Arabic means “the base.” This organization of Islamic extremists had taken shape during the CIA–supported war against the Soviet occupation in Afghanistan in the 1980s.
In the years of the late Cold War, CIA Director William J. Casey and other anti–Soviet hard–liners viewed Islamic fundamentalism as a tool to pry historically Muslim territories in the southern Soviet Union away from Moscow and its atheistic communist government.
So, besides arming a multinational force of Islamists to fight in Afghanistan, the CIA printed thousands of copies of the Koran and smuggled them into the Soviet Union.
In another trade–off for the Afghan war, the CIA looked the other way while Pakistan was developing its nuclear bomb. The CIA wanted nothing to interfere with the vital cooperation that Pakistani intelligence was providing in funneling weapons to the anti–Soviet Afghan rebels and their Islamic allies, including bin Laden.
But after the Soviets were driven from Afghanistan in 1989, many of the CIA–trained Islamist guerrillas turned their fury against other infidels encroaching on Muslim lands. The most obvious intruder was their old patron, the United States. article continues
by Ed Naha
Just once, I’d like to sit down and read or watch the news without feeling like I’ve just plunged into a Looney Tunes festival on crack. Since Dubya seems to worry about his place in history, he should rest easy knowing that he will always be known as the man who transformed fact–checking into an art usually associated with tinfoil hats, eye of newt and waxed lips. This past week has been a Dubya
WTF doozy.
On Monday, Attorney General Alberto “Seedy” Gonzales quit his post because, uh, it was Monday. Bush added his own insightful thoughts. “It’s sad that we live in a time when a talented and honorable person like Alberto Gonzales is impeded from doing his important work because his good name was dragged through the mud for political reasons.” WTF?
It gets better. Visiting the moon crater that was once called New Orleans, Bush declared, “This town is better today than it was yesterday and it’s going to be better tomorrow than it is today.” He was later joined by
Little Orphan Annie, Daddy Warbucks and Sandy for a rousing rendition of “Tomorrow.” article continues
I didn’t see a thing about this in any local papers, and yet this happened in Bellevue, WA.
By Mollie, Portland Indymedia
Despite the warnings from the media to avoid the demonstration in Bellevue on August 27th—all the streets were going to be closed, it would be dangerous, they said—about 1,000 people showed up to register their views. It was an upbeat crowed—perhaps because it was a rare opportunity to get in front of Bush to let him know what we think. Maybe because Gonzo resigned and it now feels that the Bush administration is unraveling.
A handful of Republicans many have greeted Bush inside the hotel yesterday but the people in the streets did not. They carried a range of signs to tell Bush what they thought of him and his policies. Impeachment predominated but there were many other issues that concerned people, including ending the war. Some were also critical of the U.S. Representative who was the beneficiary of this $1,000 a plate, $10,000 per photo op with Bush fundraiser. article continues
by Ben Tripp
Is absolute power concentrated in an autocratic ruler or clique in your government?
Does the leader of your country adopt any of these roles: judge, jury, or executioner?
Does he have a moustache?
If the answer to one or more of these questions is "yes", you may be living in a dictatorship. But how to be absolutely certain? It’s easy to tell if you are living under the yoke of an old–fashioned oppressive regime, especially if somebody from the Department of Health and Human Services hammers bamboo under your fingernails. But the modern type of dictator is a far subtler creature. He may not wear epaulettes or shrink human heads. Some of the foremost dictators currently in power have excellent taste in neckwear and are indistinguishable from merchant bankers. Some of them are merchant bankers, but that’s a horse of a different subject. The foremost tool used by modern dictators to subjugate their constituent populations is no longer violence, and this is what makes them so hard to identify. There is now a far more effective weapon in the dictator’s arsenal: futility. article continues
by Mary Shaw
Not only does the White House get to break laws and get away with it, apparently the U.S. military and civilian contractors in Iraq are enjoying the same lack of accountability.
And anyone who dares to blow the whistle can expect to be persecuted – – and prosecuted. Maybe even tortured.
From the Associated Press:
One after another, the men and women who have stepped forward to report corruption in the massive effort to rebuild Iraq have been vilified, fired and demoted.
Or worse.
For daring to report illegal arms sales, Navy veteran Donald Vance says he was imprisoned by the American military in a security compound outside Baghdad and subjected to harsh interrogation methods.
[…]
He had thought he was doing a good and noble thing when he started telling the FBI about the guns and the land mines and the rocket–launchers –– all of them being sold for cash, no receipts necessary, he said. He told a federal agent the buyers were Iraqi insurgents, American soldiers, State Department workers, and Iraqi embassy and ministry employees.
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by John Nichols
Carl Bernstein will always be known as the journalist who brought down a president whose disregard for the Constitution and the rule of law disqualified the errant executive from completing a second term in the White House. And Bernstein still gets a round of applause when mention is made of the role he played, as part of a Washington Post investigative team that also included Bob Woodward, in exposing the high crimes and misdemeanors of a president named Nixon.
But 33 years after Nixon resigned in order to avoid an inevitable impeachment — on August 9, 1974 — Bernstein is more concerned about a president named Bush.
When we appeared together recently at The Aspen Institute’s first symposium on the political reporting of gonzo journalist Hunter S. Thompson, Bernstein recalled the old stories of when he and Thompson were busy revealing the sordid details of Nixon’s presidency.
But the Pulitzer Prize–winning author was under no illusions regarding the extent of Nixon’s wrongdoing as compared with that of Bush and those around the current president.
Bernstein says that Bush’s presidency has produced far more “disastrous consequences” for the country than did Nixon’s.
Unlike the often crude and conniving but unquestionably intelligent and highly–engaged 37th president, Bernstein says of Bush: “He’s lazy, arrogant and has little curiosity. He’s a catastrophe…”
But that is not the worst part of the Bush era as compared to the Nixon era, explains Bernstein.
What has made this time dramatically more troubling, the 63–year–old journalist explains, is that “there is no oversight.”
“The system worked in Watergate,” Bernstein told the Denver Post. article continues
By Bill Gallagher
DETROIT –– What’s a trillion dollars when you’re making our nation more secure and the world safe for democracy? It’s easy spending that kind of money when you’re undertaking a bold experiment in nation–building while building permanent military bases with cozy proximity to Iraq’s oil reserves.
The Congressional Budget Office estimates the costs in Iraq, even with a substantial reduction of troops, will have financial consequences for at least a decade, soaring to a trillion dollars.
In 2003, when White House economic adviser Lawrence Lindsey estimated the cost of the war in Iraq could approach $200 billion, others in the administration claimed the number was way too high, and Lindsey was fired.
The Pentagon still refuses to provide long–term estimates and to budget for war costs as the Iraq Study Group recommended. It’s easier to request annual expenditures and budget supplementals, so the magnitude of the spending appears more modest.
The Pentagon’s estimate for military operations in fiscal year 2008, about $142 billion, is not enough to cover the costs of the troop surge. Medical costs if only 75,000 troops remain in Iraq for the next several years will top $13 billion.
Other hidden costs will be the lifetime benefits the government pays veterans, especially the increasing level of returning troops suffering from mental disabilities. Military recruitment costs are soaring to replenish the ranks as the war drags on and young Republicans just don’t volunteer to fight in Iraq.
President George W. Bush is using debt to pay for the war in a cold act of generational injustice.
“It’s being paid for on the national credit card,” Rep. James McGovern, D–Mass., told the Boston Globe. “It is being put on their backs, of our kids and grandkids. That is indefensible.”
Bush never flinches when he throws billions of dollars at any undertaking that has “military” written on it, and the money flows with ease for everything connected to the phony war on terror or homeland–security boondoggles.
Spending money on agricultural subsidies and tax breaks for oil companies fits right in with Bush’s idea of free enterprise. It’s the American way. As they say in Texas, helping your friends in “bidness” is what “guvment” is supposed to do.
But when members of Congress, including many Republicans, decide to spend $50 billion over the next 10 years to provide health insurance for more than six million children from low–income families now in the program and expand its scope, Bush howls about the urgent need to control federal government spending.
Bush, the most fiscally reckless president in American history, who engineered tax cuts benefiting the richest Americans by raiding the U.S. Treasury, draining a surplus and creating enormous public debt, now wants us to believe he’s looking out for the taxpayers and wants to restrain spending.
It’s not the money for the State Children’s Health Insurance Program (SCHIP) that bothers Bush and his Republican allies, it’s the principle. They don’t want to see any progress toward a national single–payer health insurance program. article continues
by David Swanson
…The Democrats in Congress, already less popular than the least popular president in history, have just rolled over and legalized his illegal spying. That’s the only way they can “get things done.” They can pass bills that should not be passed. Any useful bills have been and will be vetoed. So, the Democrats have two options left to them. First, they can announce that there will be no more bills to fund the occupation of Iraq. Second, they can impeach Bush and Cheney. Impeachment would force Republicans to defend Bush and Cheney for the next year and a half, which ought to be deadly to any politician. In fact, if enough Republicans recognize that, a conviction in the Senate will be possible. But the point is to impeach in the House, to put Bush and Cheney on the defensive, and to pass bills at the same time with an increased chance of them actually becoming law.
Tomasky’s claim, of course, is that impeachment would be the dumbest move the Democrats could make. By standing up for 54% of Americans and 76% of Democrats, Congressional leaders would, according to Tomasky, somehow hurt themselves. Tomasky makes no mention of the people who would die in Iraq and as a result of other Bush–Cheney policies while the Democrats wisely refrained from impeaching. Nor does he recall the last time they listened to arguments identical to his, when they took the impeachment of Ronald Reagan off the table. A pack of criminals got off easy, and the Democrats LOST the elections. Nor is there any mention of Richard Nixon, who was more popular than Bush and Cheney are, but whose popularity did not get any boost from Congress’s efforts to impeach him. In fact, the Democrats won the biggest victories in recent memory (well, apparently not recent enough for Tomasky).
Based on absolutely no evidence or anecdote of any sort, Tomasky simply asserts, as the Republican National Committee and Nancy Pelosi both initially did 14 months ago, that impeachment would “convert Bush from the figure of contempt and mockery he is now into one of vague sympathy.” Sympathy? People disapprove of Bush and Cheney in record numbers because they view them as criminals. Getting tough on crimes rarely creates sympathy for the criminals in the hearts of Americans. article continues
by Jaime O’Neill
In Sicko, Michael Moore’s documentary on the subject of America’s dysfunctional health care system, a group of Americans living in France sit around a table telling Moore about the advantages they receive living under the French health care system. Those advantages include no–charge–to–the–patient house calls from doctors when patients get sick in the middle of the night, plus freedom from the fear all Americans live with as we wait for the catastrophic illness that will either drive us to bankruptcy, or make us uninsurable, or even get our treatment denied as cost–conscious HMOs or insurance carriers look for ways to refuse payment for certain expensive medical procedures.
Our health care system is a mess, and most of us know this up close and personal. Co–pays increase steadily, pharmaceutical costs are wholly untethered from real value, and the number of uninsured fellow citizens grows each day. Even those of us fortunate enough to have insurance are not well served. As Moore’s film makes clear, lots of middle class working people who thought they were covered have found their claims denied, or have been put through the wringer by insurance company indifference to their health problems as corporate minions sought ways to limit treatment.
But, though the system is clearly dysfunctional, the president of these United States, a wealthy son of privilege, has no qualms about vowing to veto a plan that would expand health coverage for children of low–income families. The “compassionate conservative” who has pledged to “leave no child behind” says that health coverage for poor kids would lead us "down the path to government–run health care for every American."
In other words, the president’s message to the children of the poor is: “up yours.” article continues
by JB Peebles
Dangerous Precedent
I’ve followed the Plame case in some details, choosing to cover the political and legal ramifications of the case rather than the investigation of the outing or the trial of one participant in the outing, Scooter Libby.
The greatest damage caused by the Plame outing is not to our national security, although I’m sure the outing decimated morale among our secret agents, who must fear what their spouses or loved one might do to upset the political incumbents. This in itself would do sufficient damage. Yet far more destructive is the damage to our system of justice.
In short, the Plame outing showed that the Executive branch could do as it pleases. The system of checks and balances succumbed to the unbridled assumption of full control and zero accountability for executive actions. The White House could police itself, through a subordinate body called the Department of Justice. article continues
by Michael Collins
I contend that there is real action on impeachment and that it’s occurring right now, before our very eyes. The actors are not singling out my favorite charges – a war based on lies and election fraud. But they’ve laid the basis for some serious damage to the administration through impeachment charges against the president.
When the owners of any organization or enterprise are profoundly and consistently dissatisfied with the performance of an executive, the executive is gone and gone quickly. We’re at a point where the purported owners of this government, the citizens of the United States, can no longer tolerate inaction on the removal of the woefully inept and corrupt Bush administration. article continues
by David Swanson
It’s remarkably common for a grandson to take up his grandfather’s major project. This occurred to me when I read recently of Thor Heyerdahl’s grandson taking up his mission to cross the Pacific on a raft. But what really struck me was the BBC story aired on July 23rd documenting President George W. Bush’s grandfather’s involvement in a 1933 plot to overthrow the U.S. government and install a fascist dictatorship. I knew the story, but had not considered the possibility that the grandson was trying to accomplish what his grandfather had failed to achieve.
Prescott Sheldon Bush (1895 to 1972) attended Yale University and joined the secret society known as Skull and Bones. Prescott is widely reported to have stolen the skull of Native American leader Geronimo. As far as I know, this has not actually been confirmed. In fact, Prescott seems to have had a habit of making things up. He sent letters home from World War I claiming he’d received medals for heroism. After the letters were printed in newspapers, he had to retract his claims.
If this does not yet sound like the life of a George W. Bush ancestor, try this on for size: Prescott Bush’s early business efforts tended to fail. He married the daughter of a very rich man named George Herbert Walker (the guy with the compound at Kennebunkport, Maine, that now belongs to the Bush family, and the origin of Dubya’s middle initial). Walker installed Prescott Bush as an executive in Thyssen and Flick. From then on, Prescott’s business dealings went better, and he entered politics.
Now, the name Thyssen comes from a German named Fritz Thyssen, major financial backer of the rise of Adolph Hitler. Thyssen was referred to in the New York Herald–Tribune as "Hitler’s Angel." article continues
by Barry Yourgrau
We’ve been traveling in Europe since early June. I’m writing this in Amsterdam, latter July.
And man, has it been wonderful, being away from America. Away from the news, from the blogs, from the politics 24/7. Sure, I’ve snuck a scan of the Herald Trib in a hotel lobby or two. But mainly this has been one big dreamy Sunday–lunch break (my girlfriend’s a food critic) from the state of the USA. I’m surrounded by foreign papers, and the only lingo I try to decode is the soccer headlines. Oh, may it never end.
But it did. Libby got commuted.
And it all came back, more acute than ever: blogs–news–politics–24/7. On a tide of American Nausea.
It’s multi–edged, this Nausea (as it were). From some distance of space and time, Bush & Co’s hostile takeover looks so egregiously vivid, so outrageous, so, I dunno, contemptibly beyond belief. The Nausea comes in from the causes of this outrage and disbelief continuing unabated.
Nausea as in Burned Out. Soul sick and beyond getting well. Existentially gone.
Is it simply without bottom or end, the vat of offenses against the Constitution that this clown prince of a Pres feels free to spoon from? article continues
by David Swanson
House Judiciary Committee Chairman John Conyers has said that if three more Congress Members get behind impeachment he will start the impeachment proceedings.
I was a guest today on Bree Walker’s radio show. She’s the progressive radio host from San Diego who purchased Cindy Sheehan’s land from her in Crawford, Texas.
Bree attended an event on Friday in San Diego at which Congressman Conyers spoke about impeachment. Her report was extremely interesting. I had already heard reports that Conyers had said: "What are we waiting for? Let’s take these two guys out!" But, of course, what we’re waiting for is John Conyers. Is he ready to act? It was hard to tell from that comment. In January, Conyers spoke at a huge rally on the National Mall and declared "We can fire them!" but later explained that what he meant was that we could wait for two years and Bush and Cheney’s terms would end. Was this week’s remark just more empty rhetoric?
It appears to be more than that. Bree Walker told me, on the air, that Conyers said that all he needs is three more Congress Members backing impeachment, and he’ll move on it, even without Pelosi. article continues
by Andrew Bard Schmookler
The Bushites have now made it clear that the only way to defend the Constitution and the rule of law is to impeach them. This they’ve done by blocking legitimate congressional oversight (bogus claims of “executive privilege”, etc.) and by preventing the judicial system from imposing accountability for their criminal conduct (the Libby commutation). (See “Impeachment: The Time Has Come!” at www.nonesoblind.org/blog/?p=772.)
In making impeachment the only remedy left, the Bushite regime has made one other thing clearer than it has ever been before: what the anti–Bushite movement must do.
It is time to organize a single, coherent, highly visible movement to apply maximum pressure on Congress to move it to impeach the leaders of this lawless administration. article continues
by Dave Lindorff
Bill Moyers has put impeachment in the news, in the process shaming both the national media and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and the rest of the Congressional leadership.
In his Saturday program, Bill Moyers Journal, Moyers and guests
John Nichols, the Nation’s Washington correspondent and author of The Genius of Impeachment and
Bruce Fein, a former attorney in the Ronald Reagan Department of Justice, made it clear that the Bush/Cheney administration has gravely threatened the Constitution and the survival of tripartite, divided government.
Moyers, feigning astonishment at the arguments of Nichols and Fein, asked if it might be justified for the Bush administration to grab special dictatorial powers in order to combat terrorism. His posited position was demolished by both Nichols and Fein.
Nichols explained that the Constitution was designed by the Founders to be a “fighting” document, capable of handling dangerous times. He noted that the Constitution actually provides for the temporary barring of habeas corpus (the right to have one’s imprisonment brought before a court and adjudicated), but he said that this was something that a president had to do with the approval of Congress (not behind its back), and only if the Country was under attack, which is of course not the case right now. article continues
by Mary Ratcliff
Did you know that a couple of American attorneys, Wendell Belew and Asim Ghafoor, are the only people who can prove they have standing in a suit charging the government of illegally spying on American citizens without a FISA warrant? And how do they know? They were passed a "top secret" document during disclosure in a case when the government was considering putting their client on the US Treasury watch list for Islamic charities that the government believed are funding terrorists. The document provided positive proof that they were being spied upon by the government because the document contained a record of private phone calls they had with their client. article continues
by Mike Whitney
Presidents Bush and Putin concluded their brief summit in Kennebunkport, Maine without resolving any of the main issues. Bush seeks Putin’s help to pressure Iran into giving up its nuclear enrichment program and Putin wants Bush to abandon his plans to deploy the US Missile Defense System in Czechoslovakia and Poland. No progress was made on either topic.
Russia and the United States are now more politically divided than any time since the breakup of the Soviet Union. In fact, following the meeting in Maine, first deputy Prime Minister Sergei Ivanov, blasted Washington in the blistering rhetoric of the Cold War era:
“They are trying to push us into knocking heads with Europe… in order to create a new dividing line, a New Berlin Wall,” bawled Ivanov. “It is obvious that continuing with the plans and carrying them out by placing rockets in Poland and radar in the Czech Republic will present an obvious threat to Russia.” article continues
by Dave Lindorff
The latest poll by American Research Group, showing that 54 percent of Americans favor impeaching Vice President Dick Cheney, and that 46 percent favor impeaching President Bush, is encouraging news for impeachment advocates. Despite a corporate media blackout on impeachment that means almost nobody in the country knows that there is already a Cheney impeachment bill in the House with 14 co–sponsors
(HR 333), over half the country nonetheless wants Cheney to get the boot.
And despite House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s insistence that "impeachment is off the table," almost half the people in the country say they want the president impeached. article continues
By Bernard Weiner
By taking impeachment "off the table," Nancy Pelosi and John Conyers may have made partisan sense during the run–up to the November 2006 midterm election –– the Dems didn’t want to scare away any wavering Republicans. Perhaps it even made sense in the first few months of their new majority status in Congress. But it’s now mid–2007 and a whole lot of awful, fetid water has flowed under the political bridge in the interim.
It’s long past time for Dem leaders to re–think their strategy on this issue, and to use the great leverage their majority status now conveys –– much of that leverage inadvertently supplied by Bush and Cheney themselves –– to help protect the American people from the Administration’s dangerous policies.
The old issues are still there and together would make up formidable reasons to begin impeachment hearings in the House. But some or all of those highly–publicized issues (lying to take the country to war, U.S. attorneys scandal cover–up, torture as state policy, widespread domestic spying without court warrants, et al.) might not fly with many Republicans. They can choose to believe that the Administration has the right to be wrong in its policies but are not generally engaged in anything that would rise to the "high crimes and misdemeanors" required for impeachment.
What I’m proposing here is that the Democrats stick to one simple yet vastly important, impeachment charge that might well garner enormous support from Republicans and Dems alike: that CheneyBush have endangered U.S. national security in a wide variety of ways, and thus have violated their oaths of office to "protect and defend the Constitution of the United States," and thus the citizens of these United States. Since CheneyBush are not permitted to run for another term, impeachment is the only constitutional form of accountability for such criminal behavior. article continues
by Dave Lindorff
I’m getting sick and tired of hearing Democrats afraid of impeachment claim that it can’t be done because the Senate, where Democrats hold a precarious one–seat edge, would never vote to convict and remove, which would require 67 votes.
Let’s get something straight:
Impeachment is not about conviction and removal in the Senate. Impeachment is a stand–alone action of the House of Representatives, and requires a simple majority. article continues
by Thom Hartmann
The President of the United States has the unrestrained Power of granting Pardons for Treason; which may be sometimes exercised to screen from punishment those whom he had secretly instigated to commit the Crime, & thereby prevent a Discovery of his own Guilt. – – George Mason (1725–1792), the “father of the Bill of Rights,” noting his objection to presidential pardon powers in his first draft commentary on the Constitution of the United States he helped write
Ambassador Joe Wilson writes a New York Times op–ed article suggesting that George W. Bush knowingly lied to the American people in a Constitutionally–required duty of Bush’s office – the State of the Union speech – and Wilson’s wife is punished by having her career and her life’s work destroyed (along with the destruction of a major CIA undercover asset in the front company of Brewster Jennings, Inc.).
Coincidence or conspiracy? That’s part of what U.S. Attorney Patrick Fitzgerald was charged with discovering.
In the process, Fitzgerald found that somebody was repeatedly trying to “throw sand in the umpire’s eyes” – obstructing Fitzgerald’s investigation into the now–identified conspiracy to destroy a CIA asset as a form of political payback. That person obstructing the investigation into the conspiracy, Fitzgerald discovered, worked at the right hands of both President Bush and Vice President Cheney and was named Irving Lewis Libby. article continues
by Bob Geiger
Senator Sam Brownback (R–KS) was aghast. He was indignant as hell about how having a high public official involved in something like perjury and obstruction of justice can damage the very foundation on which our nation was built – – and he had the harsh words to show for it.
“By his words and deeds he chose to place himself above the law. By his words and deeds he has undermined the rule of law in America to the great harm of this nation," the Kansas Republican said. "By his own words and deeds, he has undermined the truth–finding function of the judiciary, at great harm to that branch of our government. By his words and deeds, he had done great harm to the notions of honesty and integrity that form the underpinnings of this great republic.”
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by Sheila Samples
“We have now sunk to a depth at which the restatement of the obvious is the first duty of intelligent men” · · George Orwell
Recently, Nova M Radio’s Mike Malloy suggested the lethargy that appears to have descended on the American people is more "rage fatigue" than a lack of knowledge or comprehension of the damage wrought by this administration. I agree, although for many of us, rather than fatigue, it’s more an inability to "focus" on any single atrocity about which to be enraged. There are just too many incoming horrors at any one time. We are in the throes of a national paralysis.
It’s not that we don’t know enough to be enraged. We know too much. About too many things. Our rage is splintered, spread too thin to be effective. For the past five years, people in this country and around the world have protested against Bush and Cheney’s genocidal assault on two helpless nations. As they prepare openly for yet another bloody attack on yet another nation, we continue to sign petitions, hold meetings, march against the corporate machine – – all to no avail.
The issues catapaulting citizens into the streets are outrageous – – each one deserving of a “million man march” on its own merits. However, because we are frustrated by a relentless media blackout and by the deepening corruption, loss of freedoms and the tightening noose of tyranny, our cries are little more than a cacophony of discord – – an impotent racket.
Both Democrats and Republicans are branches of the same tree of corruption.
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by Brady Bonk
Snipped from our own Declaration of Independence, grievances against another George in another time:
- He has refused his Assent to Laws, the most wholesome and necessary for the public good.
- He has made Judges dependent on his Will alone for the tenure of their offices, and the amount and payment of their salaries.
- For depriving us in many cases, of the benefit of Trial by Jury.
- For transporting us beyond Seas to be tried for pretended offences.
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by David Swanson
George Mason (1725–1792), the father of the Bill of Rights (1791–2002), argued at the Constitutional Convention in favor of providing the House of Representatives the power of impeachment by pointing out that the President might use his pardoning power to “pardon crimes which were advised by himself” or, before indictment or conviction, “to stop inquiry and prevent detection.”
James Madison (1751–1836), the father of the U.S. Constitution (1788–2007), added that “if the President be connected, in any suspicious manner, with any person, and there be grounds to believe he will shelter him, the House of Representatives can impeach him; they can remove him if found guilty.”
Of course, Bush has long been connected in a suspicious manner to Dick Cheney, Scooter Libby, Karl Rove, and others. Madison would probably have called for Bush’s impeachment when Bush first refused to investigate or hold anyone accountable for leaking Valerie Plame’s identity, or rather when Bush lied us into the war in the first place, or when he confessed to illegal spying, or when he detained people without charge and tortured them, or when he overturned laws with signing statements or refused to comply with subpoenas, and so on and so forth.
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By Bill Gallagher
…When people hear “al–Qaeda,” it’s natural that they think of Osama bin Laden and the Sept. 11 attacks. The insurgency, sectarian violence and opposition to the U.S. occupation in Iraq are not about fighting al–Qaeda, but that’s how Bush’s fiasco there is being branded.
McClatchy Newspapers’ Baghdad correspondent Mike Drummond exposed the sinister rhetorical shift, noting in a recent report, “U.S. forces continue to battle Shiite militia in the south, as well as Shiite militia and Sunni insurgents in Baghdad. Yet America’s most wanted enemy at the moment is Sunni al–Qaeda in Iraq. The Bush administration’s recent shift toward calling the enemy in Iraq ‘al–Qaeda’ rather than an insurgency may reflect the difficulty in maintaining support for the war at home more than it does the nature of the enemy in Iraq.”
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by Cenk Uygur
Will Bush just walk? Will he be able to leave the White House and never account for all of his law breaking and imperial acts? The man thinks he is above the law. Is he?
Do we hold our presidents accountable in this country? Are we truly a democracy? Or have we become like any third rate society that bows down to their leaders no matter what they do?
Democratic leaders are expressing outrage at President Bush’s decision to commute Scooter Libby’s decision. But will they do anything about it? No. They’ll just have more “outrage.” Wow, that ought to show him.
I’m tired of beating up on the Democrats. The real culprit here is George W. Bush and Dick Cheney. But they are being enabled by a Congress that refuses to hold them accountable.
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by David Swanson
Reverend Jesse Jackson said something recently that I’d like you to repeat after me:
I love coming to Maine, because the people here remember how democracy is supposed to work and what it takes to overthrow a King George.
I spoke on a national radio show yesterday about impeachment, and the host asked people to phone in and argue with me, but every single caller supported impeachment.
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by David Swanson
A former member of U.S. military intelligence has decided to reveal what she knows about warrantless spying on Americans and about the fixing of intelligence in the leadup to the invasion of Iraq.
Adrienne Kinne describes an incident just prior to the invasion of Iraq in which a fax came into her office at Fort Gordon in Georgia that purported to provide information on the location of Iraqi weapons of mass destruction. The fax came from the Iraqi National Congress, a group opposed to Saddam Hussein and favoring an invasion. The fax contained types of information that required that it be translated and transmitted to President Bush within 15 minutes. But Kinne had been eavesdropping on two nongovernmental aid workers driving in Iraq who were panicked and trying to find safety before the bombs dropped. She focused on trying to protect them, and was reprimanded for the delay in translating the fax. She then challenged her officer in charge, Warrant Officer John Berry, on the credibility of the fax, and he told her that it was not her place or his to challenge such things. None of the other 20 or so people in the unit questioned anything, Kinne said.
Kinne dates this incident to the period just before the official invasion of Iraq or possibly just after. She says that because the US engaged in so much bombing prior to the official invasion, she cannot recall for sure.
Prior to September 11, 2001, Kinne says, it was unacceptable to listen in on or collect information on Americans. The practice was barred by United States Signals Intelligence Directive (USSID) 18.
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by Timothy Gatto
The Progressive Left has been calling for Cheney and Bush to be impeached. Let’s look at it from the standpoint of somebody that in all actuality (even though some might not think so) is in the center. Some things I sway to the left with (like this phony war on terrorism and out Constitution being trashed by right wing sycophants) and I lean to the right on occasion (immigration, and a strong military). Does somebody like me think impeachment would actually solve anything, do I think that any good would come out of doing all of the investigations and opening all of the wounds that are festering with something as vile as impeachment when Bush and Cheney only have a year and a half left on their terms?
You bet your sweet ass I do! Not impeaching these two criminals would be a crime! I mean that with all the sincerity in my body. Bush and Cheney have done more despicable things in six years that any two Presidents thrown together. I thought that Nixon was just about the worst President that could ever walk the face of this Earth. Bush has him beaten hands down!. The only thing that the Bush administration can take credit for, is making Nixon look like a statesman in comparison to the two we have in Washington. I firmly believe that the only reason that Bush is still in office, is because Cheney would take his place. The best way to rectify that would be to impeach them both.
Some people might think that people who want Bush and Cheney impeached are “overreacting“. I don’t believe that is the case. Let us look at the facts here.
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by Brent Budowsky
The United States Supreme Court is moving to reverse long–cherished American notions of constitutional law.
The divisions that plague American society have invaded the sanctity of the court, with angry dissents and at times personal criticism among justices that illustrate both the passions and dangers of the debate.
These events escalate a pattern of extreme actions that violate cardinal American ideals on matters including torture, the Geneva Convention, attacks on the Bill of Rights, presidential assertions of authority to violate statutes with non–binding statements, secrecy of unprecedented scope, the inability of Congress to perform its historic function of preventing executive abuse, and now a bitterly divided Supreme Court that threatens values long thought to be part of our national consensus.
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by Bob Burnett
The George W. Bush administration has in recent years labelled its interventionist foreign policy "the freedom agenda". Although based upon values shared by all Americans – freedom and democracy offer the best alternatives to repression and radicalism – the freedom agenda’s focal concept is deeply ideological: capitalism produces democracy. In application, this idea has had dreadful, unintended consequences: it has tarnished the reputation of the United States and soured the appeal of democracy to most of the world.
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by David Swanson
In May of 2005 the Downing Street Memos came out, and some of us started a website and coalition called After Downing Street. And for many months we worked closely with Congressman John Conyers and many other Democrats in Congress, holding unofficial hearings, trying to pass resolutions of inquiry, and educating the public about impeachable offenses. But for the past year or so, including the past six months of Democratic majority, Congress Members have been much less interested in this project.
The most cynical interpretation of this, I think, is that Congress Members care about nothing other than elections. Prior to the 2006 elections, they feigned interest in impeachment because they thought it would help them. Now, during the two–year–long prelude to the 2008 elections, they are avoiding impeachment because they think that keeping Bush, Cheney, and the war around is the way to win, to each win individually and to win the strongest possible majority.
How many of you think that’s what they’re thinking and doing? (In Chicago 2/3 of the room raised their hands on June 21.)
The most generous possible interpretation, on the other hand, I think, is that the Democrats are waiting for the right moment, pushing investigations both publicly and in secret to help build the case, and quietly organizing to make sure an impeachment succeeds. And, in case it doesn’t, they’re working at the same time to accomplish (either in this session or the next one) the reversal of Bush and Cheney policies through legislation. So, even if they don’t hold Bush and Cheney accountable for their abuses, the Democrats hope to ban those abuses in the future.
How many people think that’s what’s going on? (In Chicago one guy in the whole hall raised his hand.)
Now, here’s a third interpretation…
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by Zbignew Zingh
The judge threw the book at Joya Williams, a former Coca–Cola company secretary. In May 2007, U.S. District Court Judge J. Owen Forrester sentenced the 42–year–old African–American woman to eight years in prison, a sentence substantially longer than that suggested by the federal sentencing guidelines. Her crime? Conspiring to steal and sell the formulas for several "top secret" Coca–Cola beverages.
Granted, Ms. Williams did nothing commendable. But did the theft of a multinational corporation’s formula for flavored fizzy water merit a jail sentence three times longer than Scooter Libby’s four count conviction for perjury and obstruction of justice as part of the cover up for outing a "top secret" CIA agent?
Judge Forrester, a 1981 Reagan appointment to the federal bench, gave Ms. Williams the exceptionally long prison sentence because, in the judge’s words: "This is the kind of offense that cannot be tolerated in our society."
So, let’s do a quick inventory of what other offenses can and cannot be tolerated in our society:…
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This article is well documented, with links to sources.
by David Michael Green
Some people think that anyone who disagrees with the American invasion and occupation of Iraq is either a bleeding–heart liberal appeaser, a George W. Bush hater, a blame America firster, an underminer of the troops, a traitor, or a geopolitical naif.
To those who see opponents of the war as fitting into one, several, or all of these categories, I say read this page. I will make no arguments herein, nor even commentary. I will twist no data nor spin any tales. I will even include some of the comments and arguments made by the administration and its supporters.
Instead of arguing against the war, I will try to offer a fairly complete account of the relevant facts one might wish to consider when evaluating America’s policy in Iraq…
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blog entry by Rep. Dennis Kucinich
Over a month ago, I stood here on behalf of the America people who were expressing concern about whether or not Congress was going to respond to the trampling of our Constitution that was going on.
blog entry continues or go watch the CNN video on YouTube
by Ernest Partridge
The Administration of George Bush has, in effect, suspended the Constitution of the United States. At Guantánamo in Cuba, in military prisons in the United States, and in secret detention facilities abroad, American citizens and non–citizens are being held without charge, without counsel, without prospect of a jury trial, in violation of the Fifth, Sixth, Seventh and Eighth articles of the Bill of Rights. These rights apply to all persons under United States jurisdiction. The word “citizen“ appears nowhere in the Bill of Rights.
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by Mike Whitney
On Tuesday, Russian President Vladimir Putin gave an hour and a half–long press conference which was attended by many members of the world media. The contents of that meeting–––in which Putin answered all questions concerning nuclear proliferation, human rights, Kosovo, democracy and the present confrontation with the United States over missile defense in Europe–––have been completely censored by the press. Apart from one brief excerpt which appeared in a Washington Post editorial, (and which was used to criticize Putin) the press conference has been scrubbed from the public record. It never happened.
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by Dave Lindorff
Since Rep. Dennis Kucinich (D–OH) filed his impeachment bill against Cheney back April 24, five other members of the House have signed on as co–sponsors, most recently Rep. Lynn Woolsey (D–CA), co–chair of the Congressional Progressive Caucus. She joins Reps. Yvette Clarke (D–NY), Jan Schakowsky (D–IL and chief deputy whip of the House), William Lacy Clay (D–IL) and Albert Wynn (D–MD) as co–sponsors of H. Res. 333.
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Track House Resolution 333 The resolution to impeach Vice-president Dick Cheney.
Read supporting documentation for VP Cheney’s impending impeachment.
After Downing Street “Impeach Cheney Now” resource page.
Los Angeles National Impeachment Center has even more news and resources.
How the president of the United States misled the public into an illegal war of aggression.
President Bush’s Impeachable Offenses,
Part 1
Part 2
Part 3
Part 4
Part 5
